The present invention relates to time metering devices. The invention is particularly useful as a parking card to replace the conventional parking meter, and therefore the invention is described below with respect to this application.
Conventional parking meters are now widely used in order to control vehicular parking and to encourage maximum turnover of limited parking areas. They also provide a substantial source of income to the municipalities using such meters. However, they involve high initial investment costs, high maintenance costs, and high collection costs, all aggravated by pilferage and vandalism.
Because of these disadvantages of the conventional parking meters, a number of municipalities have adopted the use of parking cards. These are usually cards having tear out sections which indicate the date and the expiration time of a particular parking period, the cards being displayed from the inside of the vehicle by wedging the card into the upper end of a closed window. However, these cards have not been found entirely satisfactory in many locations because of the ease of counterfeiting them or illegally tampering with them for re-use more than one time.
An object of the present invention is to provide a time metering device particularly useful as a parking card having advantages in the above respects.